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Why do people listen to him? I have a few ideas,but don't care enough to explore them.

If he's breaking the law he should be arrested. If not, I do not have the arrogance to tell others to whom they should or should not listen.In a free society people have a right to be as fuckwitted and dishonest as they choose,within the law.

'No one ever went broke underestimating public gullibility or taste" (anon)

I have always been critical of Chopra's quantum gobbledygook but watching this clip made me think that with a change of a few words - like 'universal energy' to 'endorphins' his theory is quite plausible.

Not to attract too much heat here, but we now know that we can influence the seratonin levels in others just by our words (and possibly actions), either creating calm or stress. This is not due to bad or good energy but by the response of endogenously secreted modulators (in 'normal' people). I am eagerly awaiting Lionel Tiger's new book 'God's Brain'.

Even wierd practices like reiki have been shown to induce a benefical response. I haven't studied this extensively but let me share a personal (and private) experience in the hope that others on this forum may try it out themselves.

My wife suffers from intense premenstrual cramps to the point of needing to dose herself on painkillers every few hours. If it has been a tense day.. as it usually is, I am in no mood to even talk by the end of the day. But as we lay in bed, if I notice that she is getting a cramp, just putting my palm on her lower abdomen seems to immediately relieve the cramping. Now this is a completely physiological response as she is usually as upset with me as I would be with her by this time. It has never failed to relieve her cramps and she usually falls off to sleep without much trouble.

Granted that reiki supposedly works without touch, but it is the body heat or static that creates a similar response to the hand motions in people and sometimes even in animals. As a veterinarian, I have seen more than just a placebo effect in animals that have been treated with reiki but I don't buy the "spiritual" bullshit that goes along with it.

I know little of reiki even though my initial response is to approach sceptically. Double-blind testing is needed. I could imagine that some sort of body heat may contribute. However it's hard to imagine how the claims of 'reiki remote healing' could be supported within our current understanding of science. Alex